


The Survivor - How I ended up on Scarif.

by Munnin



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: animal in distress, asshole protagonist, reference to consensual homosexual acts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: You know when you look back on your life and think, “How the hell did I end up here?” Well, I know how I ended up here.





	The Survivor - How I ended up on Scarif.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jess for the editing and support.

You know when you look back on your life and think, “How the hell did I end up here?” Well, I know how I ended up here. 

Circumstance and decisions. 

Some good, some bad, some well and truly out of my control. And some… yeah, there are some fairly major ones that are entirely my fault. 

The first one was the circumstance of my birth. I was born on Iloh. You’ve heard of it? Yeah, popular tourist destination. Tropical beaches and sparkling blue water as far as the eye can see. 

Sounds idyllic, right? 

Suuuure! From the outside, maybe. But living there… that’s less idyllic. 

See, Iloh is all islands. Some large, some tiny. Most of our food comes from the sea or is grown on the larger islands that are more soil than sand. Or is shipped from off-world. Which is expensive. Very, very expensive. For reasons I’ll explain later.

At some point in the distant past, the planetary government decided population control was the only way to keep Iloh sustainable. Some _brilliant idiot_ come up with a formula that calculated the number of people who could live on each island. There were a bunch of variables – how arable the land was, the heights of the tides, the distance to fresh water, the currents and sea temperature, the placement of reefs and protected harbours. And a whole bunch of other things I utterly failed to pay attention to at school. 

In order to keep the status quo, each major island chain is run by a council, who maintain the area’s population and economy. They make sure each area pays the appropriate taxes to the planetary government for the maintenance of planet as a whole. 

From what the elders have said, there was a time it worked for the benefit of everyone. The people were happy and prosperous. Or some such bloat! Personally, I don’t buy the _good old days_ stories. It can’t have all been sunshine and full nets. 

But the taxes have been getting steeper over time. Inflation, shipping costs, off-world developers buying up good land for resorts, environmental impact of tourism, government corruption. Everyone has a theory, and someone they want to blame for it. 

But laying blame doesn’t change the fact the situation sucks. 

Population control means anyone looking to have a kid needs to buy a licence. Birthing licences are only issued when someone dies or moves off-world permanently. But the costs don’t stop there. 

Everyone pays the living tax. Every cycle of their lives. And children are no exception. Children are taxed at a percentage based on their age, but they’re still taxed. Which means the families have two choices – pay the taxes on their child’s behalf till the child comes of age and can legally start working, or take out a deferral in the child’s name. 

Guess which one my family picked? Same as most of the population – deferral.

When I turned sixteen, I was thrown the traditional coming of age party at which I was handed a bottle of razor-fin wine and a bill for my life so far. A debt I had to get out from under on my own. 

There are not a lot of options for making money on Iloh. Fishing, farming, or whoring yourself out to off-worlders. 

Not literally. I mean, I’m a pretty handsome guy and all. Got all the best feature the Iloh human gene-pool has to offer – copper skin, lean build, soulful dark brown eyes. And best of all, I got that trademark double recessive green hair. 

Unfortunately, so did about a quarter of the Iloh population. Fortunately, it’s almost impossible to fake with dyes so it’s still a bankable trait with the tourists. My mother has it too. She uses it to charm tourists into buying her shell jewellery. 

At least, those tourists who wander off the resort islands looking for the _authentic Iloh experience_. She can’t sell at the resorts themselves, not without buying a Vendor’s Licence. And she can’t get a Vendor’s Licence without selling her jewellery. 

And all the resorts are owned by off-world developers. All the floating space-ports and shipping yards are owned by off-world corporations. None of our taxes go to the off-worlders so anything we want from them – jobs, imports, exports, travel off-world – we have to pay for. On top of our living tax.

You see where I’m going with this, right? Being born on Iloh sucks. The best most people can hope for is to break even before dying and not leave their debt to their families. 

Oh, did I mention that bit? Inherited debt. Another kick in the ribs. That’s why group marriages are so big on Iloh – to spread the load. 

Indented servitude on a planetary scale. 

But yeah, you’re right. The beaches are pretty. 

I turned sixteen, got very drunk, swum out to my favourite sandbar and reviewed my options. 

I could stay on Iloh, live my life cleaning tourist bathrooms or work my hands to leather harvesting kelp beds. Or I could join the Empire.

Why not just run, you ask? Run where? And how? I needed money to pay to get off-world. And that would just leave my debt to my family. I wasn’t born into a big island, or a prosperous family. At the time I turned sixteen, they were already on the brink of defaulting. 

The punishments for defaulting on Iloh are seriously grim. It’s either be sold into indentured slavery off-world, or be terminated and have the debt spread to your family. In dire cases, families preferred to sort it out themselves – the older or sickly members volunteering for euthanasia. That at least that comes with a payment – half the Birthing Licence their death would free up to be issued.

The Empire offered a better option. Service in the Imperial Army allowed you to pay off your debt faster. And if you signed up to stay on after your five years of commissioned service, the Empire would cover the payout for you to move off-world permanently, freeing your family to sell your citizenship for a Birthing Licence. 

Needless to say, most young Ilohians signed up for Imperial service as soon as they were able. 

Just like I did. 

Still hung-over from my coming of age party the night before, I pressed my thumb to the datapad and pledged my ass to the Emperor. 

I got through the entrance exams for the academy first go and with middling scores. Most Iloh kids did. The planetary governors had worked out pretty early that Iloh was a good source of potential ~~cannon fodder~~ recruits so our standard curriculum covered most of what was in the exams. 

The Empire wanted bodies. One way or another, they’d find a use for you. The trick was making sure that use paid well enough to cover your debt. Which meant studying at an Imperial Academy rather than going straight into basic training with the army. 

One way or another, life made a whore of you. 

I spent my first year hating the academy. I’d spent most of my life plotting a way to get off-world but once I was away, I was homesick. 

I missed the warmth of the sun, the sound of the waves, the feel of sand between my toes. 

I _loathed_ shoes. No-one native to Iloh wore shoes. Shoes were for off-worlders. The stiff leather boots of the cadet’s dress uniform felt like having my legs encased in lead. And I learnt pretty quickly that shoes were not optional. Uniform infractions are a fast way to make yourself unpopular with the instructors. And no-one encumbered with a life-tax debt can afford to make themselves unpopular.

The best way to get through was to get on with it. And try not to stick out. 

Not easy when your hair makes you a target. 

The luscious kelp-green locks that had made me such a looker on Iloh made me a freak at the Academy. I was cited for fighting twice before I gave up and cut it all off. Shaved to the scalp, it was hard to tell it was green at all.

I hated cutting it but I figured I could always grow it back. I couldn’t walk off another citation quite so easily. 

Besides, we were all _Proud Citizens of the Empire_ now. We weren’t supposed to cling to the traditions of our sad little worlds. We had to _Embrace Our Futures as Protectors of the Galaxy._

Yeah, I never could make it through those Imperial Ethics and Morals lectures without gagging. 

Three years at the Academy helped me to very clearly understand that I wasn’t particularly good at anything. 

Seriously, I excelled at nothing. Not even Amphibious Battle Tactics which you’d think years of playfighting off the atolls would have given me some insight into. 

Nope, I was chilling on the wrong slope of the bell-curve. And while other kids I knew were going off to become pilots and engineers, or being offered openings in the Officer Corps, I got handed a black full-body condom and a pile of plastoid.

_Congratulations son, you’re a stormtrooper. The keenest weapon in the Emperor's arsenal._

What a load of fish-guts! Keenest weapon, my toned tanned ass! We were canon fodder. As replaceable as the clones who had come before us and cheaper to replace. 

I hated the armour even more than the boots. Like most Ilohians, I have a swimmer’s physique – long limbs, broad shoulders and no buttock to speak off. I had to girdle the belt so tight to keep the groin and butt-plates from just slipping straight off. And try running on that shit! You end up jangling like a windchime. 

Not matter where you’re deployed, the armour is wrong for the climate. Either you’re sweating puddles into your boots or you’re freezing your stones off. With no apparent middle ground. 

And don’t get me started about the helmets. As soon as the internal systems glitched, which they did, all the time, the inside of the visor fogged up and you couldn’t see a thing. You’re just standing there, head swimming in a bubble of your own humid carbon dioxide. 

And they wonder why we have a reputation for not being able to hit the broad-side of a moon-whale!

Funny thing was, the higher-ups never noticed. Marksmen certifications were always done in controlled conditions so everyone met the same standards. Which meant inside a climate stabilised range where your visor was far less likely to fog up, even if your systems did glitch at the wrong moment. 

At the range, under ideal conditions, most of us tested really well. Which looked good on paper. Which meant the officers could take their charts and stats and look good in front of their bosses, and their boss’ bosses. And presumably the Emperor himself. 

Which makes me wonder if these jelly for brain officers actually believe stormtroopers are the fighting elite. ‘Cause I can tell you now, when your bucket’s on the fritz and there’s insects crawling up your neck-seal and your butt-crack feels like a swamp, no-one shoots straight. 

And too many of us get shot at. And killed. Even with that dumb-ass jangly white armour.

I don’t know which genius said that composite plastoid stops blaster fire ‘cause I’ve got a burn scar on my thigh that says they’re full of shit! 

After that particular incident I wanted out. Out of the useless white armour, out of the full body condom, out of the sweat-box bucket. Out of the Trooper Corps. 

But how? I was committed for five years commissioned service and I was nowhere near paying off my debt.

I took to finding ways to duck out of combat without _looking_ like I was ducking out of combat. Taking shitty night shifts at guard duty. Volunteering for petty little tasks to get in good with the officers. Accidently damaging my equipment so I’d have to wait till new armour pieces could be found or requisitioned. 

That last trick I couldn’t try too often. Couldn’t have anyone noticing a pattern. 

You know how I said there was circumstance and there were decisions? This is the bit that came down to decision. I made a decision, a selfish one. And now I’m living with the consequences. 

I’d been ‘making myself useful’ running errands for officers. It looked like sucking up to my fellow troopers but the honest truth was it was an excuse to make myself scarce. If I wasn’t around because I’d gone to do something for a superior, I wasn’t around to be sent on patrol. Which mean not having to put that damn armour on. Granted the ‘off-duty’ uniform wasn’t comfortable, not by Iloh standards, but it was a hell of a lot better than having plastoid digging into my soft bits.

I thought I was pretty suave with my little scam. Watching the officers, getting to know them, paying attention to the little intrigues and in-fights. I thought I was clever, knowing who was on the in or the out with who. It made me cocky, made me think I could play them off against each other.

Ever look back on your past self and think, “what a dick”?

I was asked to get a message to a particular officer. The sort of thing that could have, and should have, been done by a mouse droid. But the half of the squad was gearing up to go out on patrol and I was happy to be elsewhere so I took my sweet time walking from one side of the base to the other to deliver the note in person.

I walked in on the recipient, well, receiving. Roughly. From behind. From two TIE pilots. 

I should have walked away. I should have pretended I hadn’t seen anything. 

I SHOULD HAVE KNOCKED.

But I didn’t. I stood there, gasping like a landed razor fin and red as an outlander in the sun. 

After _far too long_ , I closed the door and legged it, finding a quiet corner to process what I’d just seen. 

What I wish I could unsee but couldn’t. 

Pretty sure getting double harpooned by pilots is against regulations. 

Pretty sure not locking the door while you at it is just plain dumb.

That’s when I got it into my head I could turn the situation to my advantage. I knew that particular officer had enemies; rivals who’d just _loooove_ to hear about this little… transgression. 

That was the decision that screwed me – my choice to blackmail the poor guy. To turn his moment of weakness to my advantage. 

What the hell should I care how he rubbed his salt out? I’ve got no kink for guys, or for pilots but I’ve got no high-ground to judge from. He might have been bending the rules a bit by fooling around with subordinates but who hasn’t fucked around with someone they shouldn’t have. But I knew his reputation was on the line, and that there were other officers who could and would make his life miserable if they knew.

I dangled that threat like bait, to snag myself a promotion. 

I should have been ashamed of how desperate I made him, how easily I twisted his shame to reel him in.

But I wasn’t. Not then, anyway.

And in the end, I got what I wanted. He called in favours left, right and centre to get me a promotion and cushy post to see out my five years’ service. 

Poor bastard. I heard through the gossip net he took his own life about a month later. 

And yeah, I felt pretty shit about myself then. He hadn’t been a bad guy. He hadn’t even done anything _that_ bad. It’s not like he was hurt anyone. He was just… you know…

But by then, I’d got what I wanted – a safe, well paid desk job to see out my time. 

On Scarif of all places. 

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Scarif before now. Not a lot of people have. I doubt that many have ever had cause to, even if they’re in Imperial service. It’s not exactly a secret, just a place not many people have a reason to know or care about. 

Scarif is like Iloh, only without people or anything interesting nearby.

Sun, surf, sandy white beaches and clear blue water. 

But no tourists. No native population.

Just one very big Imperial security complex called the Citadel Tower with a half dozen little relay and security stations around the equator. 

Empty atolls and island chain as far as the eye could see. 

To a boy from Iloh where you have to inherit debt to inherit space, it was like paradise. 

At least I thought so at first. But even paradise gets dull fast. Especially working a job like mine. 

Me? I was a level 3 data integrity archive officer. Sorry, let me rephrase that. I was _the_ level 3 data integrity archive officer. Which was to say I was the only one in the role. My responsibilities consisted of randomly sampling archive files to check for data corruption. 

Sounds like droid work? Yeah, you’d be right about that but there was some weird regulation about droids not being allowed to access secure archives. It was also why everything was stored separately, on individual cassettes instead of on big servers. 

Bureaucratic jellywash if you ask me but it ticked some key performance box for someone somewhere and so kept the system of Empire running. A tiny, mostly redundant little cog in the galactic governmental machine. 

And who cares! It was a safe little dead-end a trouble maker like me could be dropped into and forgotten. For the most part, I was okay with that. It paid well that if I was careful, I could come out of my commissioned time with enough to cover my debt and a little bit over. All without having to sign up for longer. 

Except that I was bored. Really bored. The job was _miiiind-nuuuumbingly_ dull. I had a performance quota to meet but that had been set sometime long before the last systems upgrade and by someone who had no understanding of what they were doing. I could tick that off within the first hour of my eight-hour shift without breaking a sweat. 

And I was on my own in the bowels of the tower. Sure, I had a supervisor. Archive Officer Tomson– a bumbling, near sighted little man who’d been here since the tower was built and had no ambition to leave. He’d been rather put-out to be told he would be managing me but once he worked out I wasn’t going to mess with his system or interrupt his naps, he promptly forgot I existed. 

As long as I met my data integrity quotas, he was happy to leave me entirely to my own devices.

At first I tried to be diligent but the shine wore off pretty fast and I started looking for distractions. 

I spent a lot of time watching holo-vids at my post, boots off and bare feet up on the console. Even that got boring after a while. Like Iloh, Scarif imported 90% of everything, including entertainment. When you have seven hours a day to kill, you can burn through every holo-novel and vid you can borrow, steal or scrounge pretty fast. 

Out of desperation more than motivation I started studying. Upskilling and educational packages were one of the few things you could get in without having to pay for it. 

As I’ve pointed out before, as a student, I’m appallingly average. But when there is literally _nothing_ else to do but rub your salt out over the same clip of Twi'lek porn you’ve seen a thousand times, anything becomes interesting. 

I didn’t start out with any interest in engineering, but most of the archives I was checking in the one hour of actual work a day I did were engineering specifications so learning to read them at least gave me something to do. 

And moon and tide, did I learn some shit! 

Do you have any idea how many projects the Empire had archived at Scarif? Because I do. Lots! Every design the Empire ever commissioned, bought, stolen, or adapted. From the smallest component to the largest engine, the Citadel Tower is a repository for them all. 

Even some really scary ones. 

I learnt a lot from studying those designs. And in all those empty hours, I got to thinking about how I could use what I knew. 

Not to blackmail anyone. Not again. Not after- hell, I don’t even remember his name. That poor officer whose life I ruined and I’ve forgotten his damn name! Anyway, after that I wasn’t going to leverage anyone like that again. Besides, I’d had my nose in the Empire’s most secret of secrets. I wasn’t going to be dumb enough to let anyone know what I knew. 

But there was a bunch of other stuff I could use, or at least adapt. Radiant light collection systems parsecs ahead of what we were using on Iloh. Battery banks, aquatic flotation systems, tide turbines, water purification plants. All things I could see uses for. 

I couldn’t download or copy the files. That would set off alarms in places I didn’t want alarms sounding. But I once I learnt technical drafting, I could draw what was on my console onto my personal datapad. It was slow but hell, all I had was time. 

I just copied the designs at first but all that study must have done me some good because I started to adapted the designs for my own use. Just small things to begin with – desalination systems that could be strapped to the underside of Iloh’s traditional outriggers and would run on the boat’s movement through the water. Flexible solar cells that could be hung on the roofs of huts. That sort of thing. 

Over time, I started to think bigger. My small ideas were great but no-one on Iloh would be able to afford to build them and no outlander with the money to fund it would see the profit. So, I started to work on systems I could sell to the tourist driven corporations – improved pontoon stabilisers, filtration systems to keep speeders from clogging up with salt. 

If I could sell my designs to the outlanders, I could afford to build fund my other designs. It wouldn’t help everyone, but it would advance my standing. With money behind me, I could afford to buy a place one of the better islands, and into one of the more prestigious group marriages. 

It was then that it hit me that I’d developed _ambition_. For the first time in my life, I had a plan – other than try not to die in debt. 

But thinking about those upper-class group marriages made me realise I’d gotten soft. Three years in the bowels of the Citadel, studying and working from a comfy chair had left me pudgy around the middle. I had a year left on my commission and I needed to harden up. No matter how clever or wealthy I was, no group marriage worth their soil would take a puffer-fish like me. 

I started sleeping at least half of my shift away. More if I could manage it. Because that meant I could use more of my down-time to train. 

No-one swam on Scarif. Not because it was dangerous. There were predatory creatures in the Scarif seas but the Citadel and its satellite pads had a ring of sonic disrupters to keep the monsters at bay. Swimming in the ocean just _not done_. There was a lap pool for that kind of thing. If you went in for it for it at all. 

Officers and troopers alike spent their downtime inside in the stale climate-controlled rooms, complaining bitterly about the sand. And the two groups never mixed, always keeping to their own rec areas. I took one look at the rarely used gyms and went outside. 

I’d gotten pale. I’d gotten flabby. I’d gotten lazy. My green hair had grown back almost black for lack of sun and salt to bleach it. 

It was time to change. 

I started running along the beaches, barefoot as an Ilohian should be. I got laughed at but what the hell did I care? I had no friends on Scarif. I’d never made an effort to make any. I worked alone and after… after that poor bastard of an officer, I kept my nose out of other people’s affairs. What did it matter to me if I looked ridiculous to them. 

I alternately swam and ran the perimeter of the tower every day after work. At first with the tide and then against it. I’d lost much of my form and practice. So much so I missed the signs of a rip one day and got swept out to the edge of one of the landing platforms. Pretty ashamed of myself for making the sort of mistake toddlers were taught not make, I pushed myself harder and harder. 

It took me longer than it should have to tone down my midsection, or work off the padding my ass had gained but I started to get there.

I noticed too the way people’s eyes followed me. Mostly I was invisible here and I’d made the most of that but I was starting to stick out again. There weren’t a lot of women on Scarif, which might have explained the number of men who eyed me off too. Either way, I took the compliment and kept training. 

If getting caught by a rip was anything to go by, it wasn’t just fitness I needed to get back. It was all those other Ilohian skills I’d let atrophy. And where better to relearn them than Scarif – almost identical environment with less people to see me embarrass myself. 

I worked longer hours, getting my quotas in early and often as a way to justify taking some leave. 

No-one chose to take their leave and stay on Scarif. Everyone else took the first shuttle back to a “civilised world”. 

I, however, stayed. Getting permission to go explore (and not get shot down by the roving sentinel droids), I took a speeder and started island hopping. 

The advantage of not making friends is there’s no-one to ask how you scrapped all the skin off your inner thigh, or where the bruise on your forehead came from. 

Climbing scarif-nut trees was theoretically easier than climbing the milk-palms back home. Which made my efforts all the more pathetic. I even laid myself out once. Misjudged a cluster of scarif-nuts and swung out too far to hack them down. Woke up on the sand with a splitting headache and lump the size of… well, the size of a scarif-nut. 

Glad there was no-one around to see that!

I was coming back from one of my island-hopping Iloh life-skills trips when I saw smoke rising from the Citadel Tower. 

I slowed the speeder, setting it to hover over the lapping waves, and stood up on the pegs. I’d been a long way out this time and too focused on the outrigger I’d been building. I hadn’t thought to look up. 

The flashing lights of space battle seared the sky and the shimmer of the planetary defence shield was gone. Small ships of a style I didn’t recognise were being chased by TIE fighters like dart-wings after flies. The wind shifted and sound carried over the water. The creak of the Armoured Cargo Walkers and the sharp whine of laser fire. 

Whatever it was, whatever was happening, I wasn’t a storm trooper any more. I didn’t owe the Empire my life and I wasn’t going to lay it down to defend the archive. If that was what the rebels were even after. 

I opened the throttle and turned the speeder around, gunning it hard back the way I’d come. 

And then I saw it. Hanging in the sky like an oversized moon. 

Project Stardust. The Tarkin Initiative’s crowning glory. DS-1 Orbital Battle Station. 

The darkest, most terrible secret the Citadel Tower held. 

And it was here. Over Scarif.

I shouldn’t have known what it was but I did. I’d spent hours in horrified fascination studying the massive crystal-based laser array. I knew what it could do. I might be the only person on Scarif who knew. 

Would they do it? Would the Empire turn the DS-1 on Scarif? Because of the Rebels? 

I knew in the pit of my stomach that if they fired with more than one reactor, I’d never live to find out. And even then– 

Revving the speeder’s engine past the red-line, I made a run for the biggest island I could see. Even if I didn’t stand a chance, I wasn’t going to wait for death. Death would have to chase me. And my instincts told me I didn’t want to be on the water when that happened. 

I saw the lines of green form on the DS-1’s dish as I hit the beach. It should have made a sound, something like that. But it didn’t. Just a line of light streaking past my vision. I didn’t turn to track it. It was aimed at the citadel, it had to be. It was the only man-made structure to aim at. 

I gunned the speeder up the beach and into the jungle, ignoring the warning lights and the engine’s whine of protest. Like most of Scarif, and Iloh for that matter, the island was volcanically formed and tended towards sharp peaks ground down over time. I needed to get to the leeward side of the island and high, as high as I could. 

I felt heat at my back – real or imagined I couldn’t tell. But there was sound now – a long drawn-out boom that I knew would deafen me for days. I dropped the speeder and tumbled into the undergrowth, wrapping my arms and legs around the largest tree I could find and _clung_.

I don’t remember what happened next. And I’m glad. When I came to, I was still wrapped around the tree but only because it was flattened to the ground with me under it. All the trees were flat. Everything covered in a layer of dirt and debris. 

It was dark, the sky blotted out by ominous yellow edged clouds. Thunderheads. The storm they were holding would be brutal when it let go. I ignored the ache in my side, the blood drying around my ears. I dragged myself to my feet and used what little light there was to search for a cave or cover or something. I made it into a rocky hollow just in time. 

It rained like the end of the world for three days. Curled up in my bolthole, I watched the water rush past. I was safe from being washed away but I was trapped by it too. The speed of the water, churned up with rocks and silt would have flayed the skin off my bones if I’d been dumb enough to try. 

There was nothing to do but wait till the storm passed and try to understand. 

The DS-1’s beam must have hit the sea first, vaporising the water, then sand then bedrock. It must have thrown that rock up and out in a mushroom cloud. The island’s peak had held against the force of the shockwave. The only reason I was alive. 

When the rain finally subsided, I crawled out of the hollow and washed three days’ worth of shit and piss and blood off myself. The water was nearly clear now the worst of the debris was washed away and I followed the stream down the side of the peak. The island had been cut to ribbons, the pouring water carving deep corrosion gullies that stripped back plants and topsoil alike, leaving only the black volcanic rock. 

When I finally found a vantage point to look out, I realised the sea was gone. Where the island had once stood alone, it was now part of a massive sandbar, dotted all over by the carcasses of sea-creatures too slow to follow the rushing water. 

I made my way down to the sand, finding something that looked like a baby bottle-back splashing helplessly in a pool of stormwater. The brackish, dirty water was making it choke and cry that all too human cry of theirs. I thought of wrapping it in what was left of my shirt, carrying it back to the sea. But I knew it was hopeless. The new shoreline was barely visible in the horizon and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, let alone carry this creature to safety. 

I still had my vibro-knife, miraculously still in my belt sheath even after everything. I should have been brave, I should have been kind. I should have given it a quick, clean death. 

But I’m not brave. And so, I left it there and started walking. 

It took me the better part of a day to find the retreated ocean’s edge. The water was no longer clear and blue but brown with churned up dirt and stripped off soil. I couldn’t see into the depths but I had to guess there would be a crater under that swirling water. A hole the size of a continent left in the DS-1’s blast. It had sucked the water back from half the world to fill it. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

At least the sun is coming out. The emptied clouds are being burnt away. 

The DS-1 is gone. The sky is empty. So is the land. 

I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I should head east, make for a relay station. If there’s anyone left out there, it might be my only hope of getting a message out. Of calling for help. 

But I don’t hold out much hope. 

The Empire fired its greatest weapon on its own facility. Whoever gave the firing order, did so knowing we were here. 

They didn’t want survivors. They wouldn’t want witnesses. 

Even if I manage to make it off Scarif, how long would I live after that?

I’m going west. That’s the way the sun goes. It seems like as good a direction as any. But I’m leaving this recording here, on the shores of the Citadel Sea. I don’t know if anyone will ever find it. And I’m not sure I care. But I wanted there to be some trace of me. 

I’m not a good man. I haven’t lived a good life. But I was here, I did live. 

Simon! His name was Simon. Simon Ahriman. The officer I– the one who– look, if you’ve gotten this far through my story, you know who I mean. 

His name was Simon and if someone finds this, tell his family I’m sorry. It’s not enough. It will never be enough. 

But it’s all I have to give. 

Either way, this is goodbye. I’m not sure if this is where my story ends but– like I said, it’s all I have to give.


End file.
